Plaque to the surgeon John Hunter, Upper John Street, Soho

John Hunter was a surgeon, anatomist and medical educator of considerable fame in late 18th-century London (and the younger brother of the similarly-talented William Hunter, most of whose career was spent in their native Glasgow). John Hunter's "Gravid Uterus" is one of the landmarks of 18th-century anatomy. The blue plaque scheme that marks London's historic buildings took some years to evolve and in its early years (when it was run first by the Royal Society of Arts and then the London County Council) plaques were not standard; it was only some years into the LCC's stewardship of the scheme that the blue plaque became standard, in the form carried on by the Greater London Council and now by English Heritage. (Ironically, whilst all "official" plaques thus do not follow the standard blue form, there are also "unofficial" plaques erected by other organisations, who are perfectly entitled to do so, which follow closely the standard blue design.) This early plaque shows a brown design which can be seen on some other early instances. Other standard features also took some time to take place. The current rules also specify that there can only be one building in London per person that is honoured, and that it must be the actual building in which the person lived or event took place, not simply its site: both rules can be seen being "broken" by some early plaques. In this case, as the small plaque below explains, the marker went up in 1907 on a building that was subsequently demolished in the 1930s, with the plaque reattached to the new structure: since then the 1930s building has apparently been replaced in turn.

Submitted via Geograph

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